The Cat and the Doll, Page 2

wanted him to dress up, ate the food Mom cooked, worked in jobs Mom approved of, prayed to Mom's god and did not curse at the dinner table. They don't make them men like that anymore, she thought. He was her mother's "doll."

  She didn't know if this man had ever been married before or if he was still married or in a relationship with 40 women or had never touched a female hand. She just didn't care. All she wanted was not to have to eat her dinners by herself any longer, sitting on the couch all by herself, looking at the hospital-like light coming out of her computer. She didn't want to be available every time a friend wanted to chat with her online, didn't want to know about some trivial local news on CNN's website and have read the comments, didn't want to know updates on Twitter or Facebook or blogs and see other people's happiness on their uploaded pictures. She wanted a life that was not streamed through cables under the pavement, under the earth like some virtual reality lived by the dead.

  She put a big smile on her face and said, as chirpily as possible: "I looooove cats!"

  "Oh, this is no ordinary cat," he answered. "She is not to everyone's liking. As a matter of fact, I'd be mighty shocked if you could stand her at all!"

  "Here we go," she thought. "Here is the first hurdle. If I can just jump over it!"

  "What could a little kitty do that I couldn't stand?" she asked with a voice humid with flirt. "I'd love to cuddle with her, pet her, and if she wants to knead my best sweater into shreds, we can manage that with some little rules like no cats on couches or on beds or?"

  "We couldn't do that," he said with restraint in his voice.

  "Okay," she thought. "You see my move, I see yours. I definitely can do better next time."

  "Oh, I was just joking! I'd rather have a happy kitty than some sweater anyway. I hate those people who reject the pleasures of life for the sake of some earthly goods. People who don't like children because they put their greasy hands on the window, they don't like dogs because they slobber on their furniture?"

  "I don't like children," he said, staring into her eyes.

  She felt like she might be losing the game for good. Oh, it is so hard to feel your way in the darkness of a just-met guy's unforgiving alleys! Too many traps, too many false doors!

  She thought of saying: "Me neither." But that would sound too cheesy. It would give her that big red tag of desperation which might be already showing itself through her ever-present sensitivity. She decided to show how resilient she was and said: "Oh my! I love kids! I have many nephews and nieces and I love them all!"

  Shoot! Now he will envision relentless visitations from hordes of children with greasy hands, looking for windows to smear them on! Summer vacations wasted at campgrounds, never-ending birthday presents, flights to remote destinations for weddings, telephone calls from panicky teenager, phone calls from panicky in-laws about the panicky teenagers, sleepovers, maybe even loans for schools!

  "?Although I don't get to see them at all," she added, trying to estimate the injury she had caused her prey. He looked unfazed. He seemed to be far away from all that talk, studying her face carefully. Maybe she was much more ahead of the game than she had thought. Maybe he wasn't her prey after all but a willing partner. Maybe he saw her as his prey who was regretting the children talk already. That must be it! Those questioning eyes, they are looking for any sign of hurt in her own eyes!

  "I like kids, but I wouldn't want my own," she said, as colorless as possible. "Anyway, I'd love to meet with this cat of yours." She felt she was in a better position. "I'm really good with them."

  "If you say so. I'll introduce you to her," he answered.

  What strange way of putting it, she thought. "I'm being introduced to a cat?" Then she remembered the Cremello mare and all that trouble she went through to bleach her hair. She even ended up getting conjunctivitis from those damned lenses. She was in no mood for wearing whiskers and a pair of ears and a tail for an aging perv who doesn't even own an apartment.

  He stood up, turned around to show the iron bar lines on his shirt and pants caused by the god-awful chair, and walked to the door. The chairs have to go, she thought. He knelt down, opened the trap door carefully, stuck his head through and called with the uttermost genteel voice into the dark corridor: "Hey kitty kitty! Hey kitty kitty! Come here my love! Would you like to join us in the living room? I know you don't care for having guests over but this lady is really nice!"

  I am nice, she said to herself. For having patience with this loony! But wait and see. Wait and see. All you need to do is to pet the fleabag, and one day you'll forget the street door open and oops! Poor kitty, I am sure some other family has taken her in. Don't you cry, my doll! Come, rest your aching head on my bosom.

  She waited and waited. Just around the time she was thinking that maybe there was no cat at all and what she had on her plate was some drug head having feline hallucinations, she heard the thumps. They were soft, almost noiseless, and slow. This cat must be pretty damn old cat, she thought. As if he read her mind, he turned around and put his index finger on his pursed lips and hushed the already quiet woman.

  The thumps came closer and closer. Finally, a large, very very large orange paw stepped through the trap door, followed by an enormous cat that was almost as big as a tiger. The body moved slowly, but the eyes were fast. They were the color of amber, shining as if lit up from the depths of the brain. The eyes darted around, first around the room, then on her. They didn't fix themselves on any of her body parts; her head full of memories and thoughts, her nose shaped like her grandfather's, her carefully manicured nails all meant nothing to the cat's eyes, but she saw herself being seen as a bulk of being, as if her sitting on that chair was the most curious thing the cat has ever seen. She was not considered as human or even as a living being but more like a new sack full of new smells that appeared before the cat.

  She felt her hair going up, and tried to avoid looking into the eyes as much as she could but is it ever possible to be face to face with a monster-sized cat and not stare into its eyes as if hypnotized. She tried to shake herself to consciousness, but the problem was that she was too conscious, feeling her cells no longer acting in unison but having abandoned ship, every cell for himself. She was nothing but a body at first, and now she became nothing at all, as if she left all of her earthly possessions and turned into jelly.

  "This is," he said with considerable pride in his voice "my cat Bastet. I named her after the Egyptian cat goddess, and she is more than a goddess to me. She is the meaning of my life."

  He dried his eyes with his sleeve - yes, they were moist this time but she was just no longer in the mood to wipe them off- and kept talking: "She has been with me all my life and has been the most loyal being for me. She used to be very friendly with my father and maybe loved him almost as much as she loved me, but when my parents brought my sister home from the hospital, she never forgave him, because she knew that he divided his heart between her and my sister. She felt like an old toy that was thrown into a corner to make room for a pretty, new doll. You see, she was with my father before I was born and with his father before he was born. After the baby, she made up her mind to love me the most and has never left my side since. They say she might have pushed my sister into the pond, but I doubt that, because by then, she was my cat and my cat only. She couldn't care whom my father loved more or even if my father existed at all."

  She thought of her own father, quite an old-fashioned chap, but at least one who didn't have a cat from hell and didn't place a pet above his children and his wife. If he had a cat like this, her mother would be awfully jealous, she would surely forget to shut some outside door to help it lose its way, and she'd restore the order to her house. Her father was allowed to make toys of women, but making a toy out of a wife for the entertainment of a cat?

  She could no longer think straight. Thoughts rushed through her hear and got mixed up, tangled, bent, left unfinished. She remembered her mother, her warnings, how her mother knew about her father and his toys, th
e women he played with, how he used them to play with her mother so that she'd feel furiously jealous and jump on him to tear him apart and after him pleading for hours, act all passionately in the bed after all those years. How her mother called her father: My love, my doll!

  By this time, the cat had walked carefully around the furniture which now appeared to be dollhouse-sized compared to the beast's gigantic presence, and was now right nearby her, smelling, nosing her hair, ears, neck. He kept talking about the very special bond between the cat and him, but she didn't respond because she couldn't respond. Her tongue and vocal cords were not hers although the smell of the cat's breath pulled her back into her body from her jelly stage very quickly. If anything, she was too much in her body right now, feeling her rattling bones and twitching muscles. The cat, never ever looking her in the eyes, put her dinner plate-sized paws on her thigh and started to knead them. She thought the chair would collapse with the weight, but it didn't, for it was made of iron. Oh, that must be the explanation- the iron chairs with no padding on them- so that the cat couldn't destroy them in one strike. Kneading was so very painful, those paws armed with nails as long as butter knives but sharper then a